It Was A Standard Case
by AlyssWolf
Summary: Mulder gets sick on a case. Why didn't Scully realize his condition sooner? Sickfic. Hurt/comfort. ...is Scully finally willing to realize the depths of her feelings for Mulder? Set sometime before the events of Fight The Future.


"Mulder?"

Scully's partner's face fell right against her shoulder causing her to struggle to stay on the road.

"Whoops." Mulder pulled his head back up and shut his eyes as he leaned back in his own seat. Scully flicked her gaze once over the man's pale face then back to the winding Tennessee road ahead of her.

"Mulder?" She questioned again, hoping to gain at least some kind of unintelligible mutter to reassure her of his level of alertness. The car hit a bump, forcing Mulder's head to snap forward and then back against the headrest.

"Mulder!" As she said his name a third time, she could hear the sharp rise in her voice as panic threatened to make an appearance. When Mulder had come in late to work that morning, he had brought with him a stuffy nose and a somehow... less intense aura than usual. Scully frowned. He had also come in with his stupid grin and his eyes bright-as always-with curiosity. She shifted in her seat. Though she would refuse to admit it to herself on the best of days, she supposed he had distracted her with his usual Mulder-ish charm. No, that wasn't it at all, she thought with annoyance. No, he had simply hidden the fact that he was ill well enough from who he knew was a very busy and therefore _distracted_ Scully.

With a quiet sigh, she found a safe place to pull over from the winding roads before leaning back her partner's seat and laying a hand softly against his forehead.

"Jesus Mulder! You're burning up!" She squeaked quietly to herself. The hand that she pulled away was slick with sweat and the poor man seemed to be shivering ever so slightly. "God."

How could she have overlooked the seriousness of his condition this whole time? She thought back to that morning, then throughout the day causing scattered images to pop into her mind-Mulder grinning up at her from his desk,- a zoomed in image of Mulder's jaw and forehead moving while he explained something completely outlandish and unreasonable to her- Mulder chewing on a pencil- _oral fixation_ she thought fleetingly, -His pretty eyes- Scully's frown deepened.

 _I suppose he did seem a bit pale…._ How could she have not noticed this sooner? She was a medical doctor for God's sake. She felt a wave of intense guilt wash over her: she was the only one he had to look after him. Finally Mulder opened his mouth to speak.

"You think I have pretty eyes, Scully?" the redhead's eyes widened with embarrassment.

"Mulder! Lay back, we're only a few miles away from the motel." Mulder leaned back and closed his eyes.

"That bad, huh?" Scully arched an eyebrow.

"I can see it written all over your face, Dr. Scully. Anyway I felt fine this morning."

Scully's expression molded into that of her signature skepticism- a look that Mulder both feared yet somehow also enjoyed. It was comforting in a way.

"Well, at any rate, whether or not this is due to that puncture wound I got earlier in the day-"

Scully shut her eyes and scrunched up her face in sudden exasperation. She guessed that she should have seen this theory coming.

"Just a regular old thumbtack." She couldn't help herself from correcting.

"-which was quite possibly laced with that green liquid and you know it-you were there Scully, before th-the-" Mulder broke himself off with a fit of coughing. Scully turned the keys in the ignition.

"Mulder, you came in sick this morning. I could hear it, see it; everybody could."

Mulder sighed heavily, for once too tired to argue the truth with his partner, settling back against his seat with a prick of amusement on his breath.

"Well, whatever, I know I'm in good hands with you, _Dr. Scully."_ He drew out her name uncomfortably slowly and topped it off with a wiggle of his eye brows.

Scully pushed her tongue into her cheek and jerked the car back onto the road earning a grunt of annoyance from her patient. Jesus, maybe he really wasn't that sick after all.

"..Scully?" Mulder enquired, the word emerging from what now sounded like a badly scratched throat.

"Hmm?" The agent replied as she focused on gently pressing a cold washcloth against her partner's burning forehead. Despite Mulder's half-hearted attempt at flirting, when they had reached the motel he'd insisted against Scully giving up any of her precious sleep time in order to take care of him. In the end Scully had curtly ordered him to keep his mouth shut and checked into a room with two queen beds for easier and around the clock access to her friend.

Now, as Mulder lay there under the crappy motel room lighting, he had all but forgotten about his earlier protests.

He was completely prepared to tell Scully it was because he had nothing else to do:he watched her face with utterly unbridled respect as she worked; studied the familiar curve of her lips, the slope of her nose. He noted the burning concentration in her shining blue eyes, which were fixed solely on him. He never took these moments for granted.

Scully brushed some loose hair back from his forehead and Mulder eventually felt the rhythmic sensation soothing. Rhythmic? Rhythmic. Scully was running her small, precise fingers gently through his hair. When she finally caught him staring up at her she abruptly yet somehow casually stopped.

"What were you, uhh, going to ask me earlier Mulder?"

"Oh, that's…" he followed her every move as she prepared a thermometer and a cup of multicolored pills that he was in no way looking forward to taking.

"Well?"

Mulder caught her in an unblinking gaze, his courage blown out of proportions from his fever.

"Did you really mean what you said earlier? About me having nice-no, I believe the word you used was 'pretty', eyes?"

 _Dammit all. Damn her brain for ever stringing those words into a coherent thought in the first place. Why would she even think that?_ How _could she have thought that_ outloud _?_

Scully licked her lips in annoyance and rearranged her position on the side of the bed, not prepared to respond, and refusing herself any and all plans to.

"Here, take these." She stretched her arm toward her sickly partner's face.

"But you haven't even answered my question yet." Mulder murmured with an almost childish pout.

A few words instantly came to the front of her mind to use in the unlikely case that she would ever be forced at gunpoint to describe his current expression: innocent, vulnerable, adorable…

"You haven't even taken my temperature! How are you supposed to know what pills to give me?"

Scully frowned down at him, eyes shining with concern.

"Mulder, I took your temperature no more than ten minutes ago. Here."

He gulped them down reluctantly but obediently.

"So heavy…" Mulder murmured minutes later as his eyes struggled to keep their gaze focused on Scully's angelic face. Her heart panged as she reached out to cup his face in her hands and rub his jaw with her thumb. She reprimanded herself for acting on this impulse but reconciled that he wouldn't remember it anyway.

"I know, I know…"

He stood alone in a field. An utterly empty field, void of all but ragged patches of rough, yellow-gold grass. He gazed up; the twinkling lights of the stars dancing in his eyes and bringing with them a sense of comfort, if only for how often he always seemed to look up at night.

 _Boyish wonder._

Mulder spun around to find the source of the airy voice that seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere at all.

"Scully!?"

 _One Fox Mulder._

The voice seemed to be smiling.

"Scully where are you?" Where was he?

He tripped suddenly on a root that upon casting his gaze to the ground found didn't exist. He was forced again to look up into the twinkling night sky. But this time, the stars were all wrong- all out of place; he couldn't for the life of him find any familiar constellations. And as more voices chimed in all around him in various tones, he felt the beginnings of Panic began to pour into his chest.

 _Extraterrestrial life!_ His own voice, he noted.

 _Mulder! What did you do this time?!_ Disappointed _,_ Skinner.

 _Dana Scully, pleased to meet you._ Dana. He almost smiled.

 _The X-files._ Cancer man.

 _._

Memories both good and bad in the form of images bombarded the field and then shouted in his mind, each voice leaving a ringing sound in it's wake. The wind whipped around him as the frequency of the memories picked up to a tremendous speed, and suddenly the earth was buzzing. He was buzzing and then everything stopped, everything was blanketed in stark bright white-

 _Fox!_ He felt himself tear up. _Fox! Save me!_

"Samantha!?" he had hurt his leg in the fall, and struggled to get up.

 _Trust no one._ *bang!* One clear gunshot rang out. "Samantha where are you!?" *Bang!* another. *Bang! Bang!* two more in rapid succession. The world began glowing impossibly brighter and the voices boomed and echoed about his skull as he desperately called out. "Samantha!? Scully!?"

Suddenly the world fizzled out as waves of heat and smoke curled up around him, stinging his eyes. Then the cigarettes rained down, hundreds, thousands of them beat down on him in painful slow motion. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. A cheshire cat's grin.

 _I'd suggest you save her, Mulder. I'm killing her. She's in quite a great amount of pain. She's dying. You'd better go to her, Mulder. Mulder!_

"Mulder!"

He thrashed awake, eyes darting frantically about the room, feeling somehow more exhausted and sleep deprived than before he'd shut his eyes.

"Scully?" he whispered uncertainly. She was hovering over him and rubbing his sweat slicked back, hushing him back into feeling secure like one would a child.

"It was just a dream, Mulder, a dream."

Scully would be lying if she said that she wasn't shaking slightly with adrenaline. She knew that the man suffered from nightmares; he had even confided in her specific details of a select few, but she had no idea that they were this intense. She couldn't help her sharp little intake of breath as Mulder grabbed her arm for dear life, eyes boring into her's, and looking like a mad man's.

"You're okay, Scully? He's not-they didn't do anything to you?"

"Yes, I-Mulder!" She gasped as he pulled her into a tight embrace. He was still shaking and his fever had definitely not broken yet either. He pressed his face into Scully's shoulder. "You had a dream! A nightmare! You have a raging fever!" Scully struggled to keep her voice steady and light as he gripped her.

"I couldn't save you-couldn't save anybody...I never can." She felt thin, hot tears begin to soak her shirt, and yes, her heart broke a little.

She attempted a scoff. "Mulder, you know I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself." She gently pushed her partner back down onto the bed and draped the washcloth back over his head, once again urging the bangs out of his face.

"Scully…" He began bashfully, "Promise you won't leave...I can't have you...getting taken away, what if that dream...I mean it's happened before, why did I dream that now? Prophetic dreams are very common you know." His voice became more frantic as he babbled on and on as Scully tried her best to shush him gently. When she finally did, Mulder sniffed pitifully and Scully felt her internal warnings against any impulses finally move to the very back of her mind. As they had before. _As they always end up doing._

She took his hand in both of hers, practically radiating with pure affection for the man; knowing full well that they wouldn't talk about this, but that it didn't matter to her if for some reason they did; that Mulder needed her and that she wasn't going to let his fever was toy with him this way.

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

"Well how can I be sure?" Scully tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned in again to place a kiss on his temple.

"You'll just have to trust me." She half whispered.

Mulder took a deep breath and even as in a few moments she noticed that he seemed to come back to his senses; she kept his hand in hers. She ignored the pinpricks of protest scratching at the edge of her mind, attempting to lull her back into safer territory.

"But you know what they say," Mulder began with a gleam of sheepishness mixed with something indefinable in his green eyes. The agent cocked her head and unconsciously rubbed his hand with her thumb.

"What do they say, Mulder?"

"''Trust no one.'"

Scully grinned.


End file.
